Underwhelming pleasures: Toward a self-regulatory account of hedonic compensation and overconsumption.

Hedonic overconsumption (e.g., overconsumption of gratifying behaviors, e.g., eating, gaming) is common in daily life and often problematic, pointing to the need for adequate behavioral models. In this article, we develop a self-regulatory framework proposing that when an actual consumption experience falls short of hedonic expectations-such as when being distracted-people will want to consume more to compensate for the shortfall. In a preliminary meta-analysis, a small-scale field experiment on distraction during lunch and subsequent afternoon snacking (Study 1), and a preregistered experience sampling study (Study 2) involving more than 6,000 consumption episodes in everyday life across multiple consumption domains, we investigated the predictions from our hedonic compensation model. There was clear and consistent evidence across studies and analyses for the prediction that distraction during consumption compromises the actual enjoyment of a given consumption experience. Both empirical studies yielded consistent evidence for a positive association between actual enjoyment and consumption satisfaction but inconsistent and weaker evidence for the expected role of actual-expected enjoyment discrepancies for this part of the model. There was also consistent evidence for the expected negative association between consumption satisfaction and the need for further gratification. Finally, there was moderate and inconsistent support linking the need for further gratification to subsequent consumption across Study 1 (amount and frequency of snacking in the afternoon) and Study 2 (shorter duration to subsequent consumption). Taken together, the present framework provides initial support for the proposed link among compromising consumption contexts, consumption enjoyment, and subsequent hedonic compensation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Prepare to Compare: Effects of an Intervention Involving Upward and Downward Social Comparisons on Goal Pursuit in Daily Life.

In a preregistered ecological momentary intervention study, we alternately instructed participants to adopt an upward and downward comparison focus. In all, 349 participants reported 8,137 social comparison situations across 6 days and three comparison conditions (baseline, upward, downward). For each comparison, participants reported social comparison direction, motivation, effort intentions, and emotions in five daily reports and one daily end-of-day summary. As predicted, an upward comparison focus resulted in more self-improvement motivation (pushing) and more negative emotions, whereas days with a downward comparison focus resulted in decreased motivation (coasting) but more positive emotions (vs. baseline). However, at the end of the day, people experienced lower goal approach on upward but higher goal approach on downward comparison days. Hence, engaging in strategic upward comparison was motivating in the short term but resulted in surprisingly opposite effects at the end of the day. We offer possible explanations from cognitive and motivational perspectives.

When and Why Do People Accept Public-Policy Interventions? An Integrative Public-Policy-Acceptance Framework.

The successful introduction of public policies to prompt behavior change hinges on the degree to which citizens endorse the proposed policies. Although there is a large body of research on psychological determinants of public policy acceptance, these determinants have not yet been synthesized into an integrative framework that proposes hypotheses about their interplay. In this article, we develop a review-based, integrative public-policy-acceptance framework that introduces the desire for governmental support as a motivational foundation in public-policy acceptance. The framework traces the route from problem awareness to policy acceptance and, ultimately, policy compliance. We propose this relationship to be mediated by a desire for governmental support. We integrate numerous key variables assumed to qualify the relationship between problem awareness and the desire for governmental support, such as control attributions, trust, and value fit, as well as the relationship between the desire for governmental support and policy acceptance, such as perceived policy effectiveness, intrusiveness, and fairness. We exemplify the use of the proposed framework by applying it to climate policies.

Does Sexual Desire Fluctuate More Among Women than Men?

There is a lay assumption that women's sexual desire varies substantially over time, whereas men's is stable. This assumption is mirrored in prominent theories of desire, which posit that women are more variable than men in the extent to which they desire sex, and that women's sexual desire is more contextually sensitive than men's. We tested this assumption across three longitudinal studies. Study 1 assessed desire at 3 time points spanning 13 years (Nobservations = 5562), and Studies 2 and 3 (Nobservations = 11,282) assessed desire moment-to-moment over 7 days. When desire was measured over years, women were more variable in their sexual desire than men (Study 1). However, we found a different pattern of results when desire was measured over the short term. In Studies 2 and 3, we found no significant differences in women's and men's desire variability. The extent to which desire varied as a function of affective states (e.g., happiness) and relationship-oriented states (e.g., partner closeness) was similar for women and men, with some exceptions; women's desire was more negatively associated with tiredness and anger in Study 2. These data qualify existing assumptions about sex differences in sexual desire variability.

Neural and Cognitive Signatures of Guilt Predict Hypocritical Blame.

A common form of moral hypocrisy occurs when people blame others for moral violations that they themselves commit. It is assumed that hypocritical blamers act in this manner to falsely signal that they hold moral standards that they do not really accept. We tested this assumption by investigating the neurocognitive processes of hypocritical blamers during moral decision-making. Participants (62 adult UK residents; 27 males) underwent functional MRI scanning while deciding whether to profit by inflicting pain on others and then judged the blameworthiness of others' identical decisions. Observers (188 adult U.S. residents; 125 males) judged participants who blamed others for making the same harmful choice to be hypocritical, immoral, and untrustworthy. However, analyzing hypocritical blamers' behaviors and neural responses shows that hypocritical blame was positively correlated with conflicted feelings, neural responses to moral standards, and guilt-related neural responses. These findings demonstrate that hypocritical blamers may hold the moral standards that they apply to others.

Healthy eating in the wild: An experience-sampling study of how food environments and situational factors shape out-of-home dietary success.

Across many parts of the world, people increasingly eat out-of-home. Simultaneously, many people strive to eat a healthier diet, but it remains unclear to what extent and how eating out helps or hinders people in achieving their dietary goals. The present study investigated how characteristics of the physical micro-environment in out-of-home food outlets (e.g., cafeterias, supermarkets, and restaurants) influence the healthiness of food choices among a sample of German adults with a goal to eat healthier. We used an experience sampling method to obtain detailed information about people's motivation for selecting a specific food outlet and the outlet's micro-environment. We further asked for people's mood, visceral state, and thoughts during their food choice and obtained evaluations of food choices reported near their occurrence and in externally valid conditions. The data was collected via a mobile app over a period of six to eleven days between November and December of 2018 in Germany with a sample of 409 participants (nobs = 6447). We find that even health-conscious people select food outlets and their respective micro-environments based on short-term goals, such as ease, taste, and speed of a consumption episode rather than long-term health outcomes. Using multiple regression, we show that micro-environments that promote healthy food, make such food more appealing and easier to select facilitate healthy food choices. We further identify some of the psychological mechanisms through which the micro-environment can affect food choices, as well as how individual characteristics moderate the relationship between specific micro-environmental factors and goal success. Taken together, our findings suggest the opportunity for, and arguably also necessity of, reshaping food environments to better facilitate healthier choices and support public health in the face of increasing out-of-home food consumption and the adverse consequences of unhealthy diets.

How do implicit and explicit partner evaluations update in daily life? Evidence from the lab and the field.

Evidence suggesting that implicit partner evaluations (IPEs), but not explicit evaluations (EPEs), can predict later changes in satisfaction and relationship status has led researchers to postulate that IPEs must be especially sensitive to relational reward and costs. However, supporting evidence for this assumption remains scarce, and very little is known regarding how IPEs versus EPEs actually update in everyday life. Two studies (one in-lab dyadic interaction study, N = 255, and one 14-day dyadic diary study, N = 348) investigated updating in IPEs and EPEs in the context of real-life relationship experiences. Study 1 revealed that the level of positive and negative experiences that a couple encountered while discussing a divergence of interests in their relationship predicted pre-to-post changes in EPEs, but not in IPEs. Study 2 revealed that IPEs showed less sensitivity to everyday relationship experiences across multiple metrics over the course of 14 days. Specifically, compared with EPEs, IPEs fluctuated less at the within- (vs. between-) person level, showed less-abrupt changes from day-to-day, and had a substantially weaker relationship with same-day positive and negative experiences. Rather than covarying with same-day experiences, IPEs appeared sensitive to relationship experiences aggregated across multiple prior days as well as to highly diagnostic relationship experiences, such as breakup. Consistent with recent advances in social-cognitive research, these findings support a modified account of IPE sensitivity, according to which IPEs show only gradual shifts under everyday circumstances, but more-dramatic shifts under highly diagnostic circumstances. Implications of these findings for close relationships and implicit social cognition research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The experience of trust in everyday life.

In this contribution, we review current research on daily-life experiences of trust in diverse and naturally occurring social interactions ranging from close relationships to complete strangers. Experience-sampling methodology allows the joint examination of situational, relational, dispositional, motivational, and behavioral variables in their relation to trust. Thereby, these recent studies advance our understanding of how trust is shaped by important features of the social situation such as perceived conflict of interest. They elucidate how trust fluctuates in accordance with stable traits, and how these traits interact with situational variables (e.g., social closeness to the target). Furthermore, trust connects social perceptions of trustees with trustors' prosocial tendencies.

Best research practices for using the Implicit Association Test.

Interest in unintended discrimination that can result from implicit attitudes and stereotypes (implicit biases) has stimulated many research investigations. Much of this research has used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure association strengths that are presumed to underlie implicit biases. It had been more than a decade since the last published treatment of recommended best practices for research using IAT measures. After an initial draft by the first author, and continuing through three subsequent drafts, the 22 authors and 14 commenters contributed extensively to refining the selection and description of recommendation-worthy research practices. Individual judgments of agreement or disagreement were provided by 29 of the 36 authors and commenters. Of the 21 recommended practices for conducting research with IAT measures presented in this article, all but two were endorsed by 90% or more of those who felt knowledgeable enough to express agreement or disagreement; only 4% of the totality of judgments expressed disagreement. For two practices that were retained despite more than two judgments of disagreement (four for one, five for the other), the bases for those disagreements are described in presenting the recommendations. The article additionally provides recommendations for how to report procedures of IAT measures in empirical articles.

Binding moral values gain importance in the presence of close others.

A key function of morality is to regulate social behavior. Research suggests moral values may be divided into two types: binding values, which govern behavior in groups, and individualizing values, which promote personal rights and freedoms. Because people tend to mentally activate concepts in situations in which they may prove useful, the importance they afford moral values may vary according to whom they are with in the moment. In particular, because binding values help regulate communal behavior, people may afford these values more importance when in the presence of close (versus distant) others. Five studies test and support this hypothesis. First, we use a custom smartphone application to repeatedly record participants' (n = 1166) current social context and the importance they afforded moral values. Results show people rate moral values as more important when in the presence of close others, and this effect is stronger for binding than individualizing values-an effect that replicates in a large preregistered online sample (n = 2016). A lab study (n = 390) and two preregistered online experiments (n = 580 and n = 752) provide convergent evidence that people afford binding, but not individualizing, values more importance when in the real or imagined presence of close others. Our results suggest people selectively activate different moral values according to the demands of the situation, and show how the mere presence of others can affect moral thinking.

Generosity and cooperation across the life span: A lab-in-the-field study.

Understanding persistence and changes in prosociality across the life span is fundamental to inform theory and practice. As life expectancy increases and pressing societal challenges demand increasing generosity and cooperation among individuals, it is crucial to understand intergenerational interactions. We present the findings from a novel lab-in-the-field experiment (N = 359, 18-90 years) that examines generosity and cooperation between generations. Our methodological approach allows us to study the effect of age on prosocial behavior as a function of the age of an unknown partner. We ask participants to make several decisions, and to state their expectations for their partners' behavior, in a dictator game and a prisoner's dilemma game with real monetary outcomes. The dictator game serves as a measure of generosity, whereas the prisoner's dilemma serves as a measure of cooperation. We find that individuals used age as key information to condition behavior. Generosity was greater among older adults in response to young and older relative to middle-aged partners. Among younger adults, cooperation was greater in response to middle-aged and older partners relative to their own age cohort. All age groups expect less cooperation from young partners than from older and middle-aged partners. However, relative to young adults, older adults are more cooperative with young partners. Our study has crucial implications for the understanding of human generosity and cooperation across the life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Moving beyond Inhibition: Capturing a Broader Scope of the Self-Control Construct with the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS).

The purpose of the present research was to develop a more comprehensive measure of self-control that reflects recent theoretical advancements that extend beyond inhibition. Across six samples (N = 1,946, 48.95% males, Ages 18-76, US-MTurkers/Israelis), we sought to develop and validate the Self-Control Strategies Scale (SCSS), as well as examine its predictive validity across important life domains (e.g., weight, physical activity, savings). The SCSS is comprised of eight self-control strategies that represent three categories: anticipatory control (situation selection, reward, punishment, pre-commitment), down-regulation of temptation (distraction, cognitive change, acceptance), and behavioral inhibition. Results indicate that there was a strong association between the widely used Brief Self-Control Scale (BSCS). and the behavioral inhibition strategy of the SCSS. While the behavioral inhibition strategy was a strong and consistent predictor of most self-control related outcomes, results further indicate that in some domains, but not others, certain strategies may be beneficial whereas others may be detrimental. While inhibition remains to be an important factor of self-control, our findings point to the importance of adapting the use of different strategies to different domains. The SCSS can therefore be used to gain a more fine-grained understanding of the self-control construct.

More threatening and more diagnostic: How moral comparisons differ from social comparisons.

The current research tests how comparisons in the moral domain differ from other social comparisons in three ways. First, an initial experience-sampling study shows that people compare downward more strongly in the moral domain than in most other domains (Study 1, N = 454), because people like to feel moral and present themselves as moral. Second, the classic threat principle of social comparison holds that people choose downward comparisons to improve their well-being after a threat to their self-esteem. We propose that in the moral domain the threat principle is intensified because morality is a uniquely important and central comparison domain. Across seven experiments (Experiments 2a and 2b, 3a-3c, 4a and 4b), we find that people search for downward comparisons much more than in other domains. This effect is so strong that people are willing to forgo money and incur time costs to avoid upward moral comparisons when threatened. Third, another classic principle of social comparison holds that people only consider comparisons that are diagnostic (i.e., close or similar) and therefore self-relevant, while dismissing extreme or dissimilar comparisons as irrelevant. We propose that this diagnosticity principle is attenuated because morality is a binding code that applies equally to all humans. Across four experiments (Experiments 5a and 5b, 6a and 6b), we find that even the most extreme and dissimilar moral (but not other) comparisons are deemed relevant and potentially threatening. Together, these twelve studies (total N = 5,543) demonstrate how moral comparisons are a ubiquitous but fundamentally distinct form of social comparison with altered basic principles. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A motivational framework of social comparison.

Whether people's current motivation levels increase or decline also hinge on their social environment. The current research tightly integrates motivational principles from self-regulation research with social comparison processes. In a preregistered experience sampling study including more than 5,400 social comparison situations from people's everyday life, we investigated how discrepancy assessments between the self and a comparison standard influence people's motivation and affect. Results revealed a nonlinear relationship between negative discrepancies (upward comparisons) and effort investment ("pushing"): Whereas motivational pushing increases with negative discrepancies, more extreme upward comparisons were associated with less pushing, but increased disengagement ("giving up"). The effect of negative discrepancies on pushing motivation was even more pronounced for people perceiving high control in their domain of comparison or when the domain was considered as important. Positive discrepancies (downward comparisons), on the other hand, were related to a reduction in effort ("coasting"). Similarly, emotional responses, such as an increase or decrease in self-esteem, are yet another signal for whether someone needs to invest further effort at a current time. The self-regulatory perspective on social comparison provides a novel framework uniting motivational, emotional, and cognitive processes of social comparison for a better understanding of when social comparison can benefit or hinder people's everyday goal pursuit. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Do people realize how their partners make them feel? Relationship enhancement motives and stress determine the link between implicitly assessed partner attitudes and relationship satisfaction.

Do people realize the evaluative feelings that are spontaneously activated by their partner? If so, do they use those evaluations when judging their romantic relationships? To answer these questions, we investigated the association between automatic partner attitudes and judgments of relationship satisfaction in 7 studies. Study 1 was a meta-analysis of 86 correlations that revealed a very weak association between implicitly and explicitly assessed relationship evaluations, and Studies 2a-2c revealed that people failed to accurately report their automatic partner attitudes even when specifically asked to do so. Consistent with the idea that such inaccuracy emerged in part because motivational factors led people to override their automatic attitudes, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that automatic partner attitudes better aligned with relationship judgments when people were incentivized with money (Study 3) and had dissolved their relationship (Study 4). Nevertheless, consistent with the idea that overriding automatic attitudes requires the opportunity to deliberate, Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated that automatic partner attitudes better aligned with relationship judgments when people experienced more stress at the daily level (Study 4) and yearly for two years (Study 5). In Study 5, the interaction between stress and automatic attitudes emerged controlling indicators of negativity and was further moderated by relationship enhancing motivations among wives. These studies (a) help explain why automatic partner attitudes predict self-reported relationship satisfaction over time and (b) provide support for theories of social cognition suggesting that people have access to implicitly assessed attitudes that is obscured by motivations and opportunities to deliberate. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Trust in everyday life.

Although trust plays a pivotal role in many aspects of life, very little is known about the manifestation of trust and distrust in everyday life. In this work, we integrated several prior approaches to trust and investigated the prevalence and key determinants of trust (vs. distrust) in people's natural environments, using preregistered experience-sampling methodology. Across more than 4,500 social interactions from a heterogeneous sample of 427 participants, results showed high average levels of trust, but also considerable variability in trust across contexts. This variability was attributable to aspects of trustee perception, social distance, as well as 3 key dimensions of situational interdependence: conflict of interests, information (un)certainty, and power imbalance. At the dispositional level, average everyday trust was shaped by general trust, moral identity, and zero-sum beliefs. The social scope of most trust-related traits, however, was moderated by social distance: Whereas moral identity buffered against distrusting distant targets, high general distrust and low social value orientation amplified trust differences between close vs. distant others. Furthermore, a laboratory-based trust game predicted everyday trust only with regard to more distant but not close interaction partners. Finally, everyday trust was linked to self-disclosure and to cooperation, particularly in situations of high conflict between interaction partners' interests. We conclude that trust can be conceptualized as a relational hub that interconnects the social perception of the trustee, the relational closeness between trustor and trustee, key structural features of situational interdependence, and behavioral response options such as self-disclosure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Choice architecture meets motivation science: How stimulus availability interacts with internal factors in shaping the desire for food.

Recent research on choice architecture has highlighted the role of external aspects such as stimulus proximity or availability on consumption. How such external factors interact with internal, intraindividual factors, however, is very poorly understood. Here we show how the wanting for palatable food emerges from the interplay of one key external factor, availability, and two key internal factors central to motivation science, need state and learning history. Across three experiments in the food domain, we find converging evidence for a main effect of stimulus availability which is qualified in theoretically predicted ways by a three-way interaction such that food desire peaks when the availability of tempting food stimuli is accompanied by high need states and a positive learning experience. A pooled analysis across the three studies supported this general conclusion. We conclude that nudging effects are strongest when external factors of choice architecture synergize with internal factors in critical ways.

Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies.

Given the powerful implications of relationship quality for health and well-being, a central mission of relationship science is explaining why some romantic relationships thrive more than others. This large-scale project used machine learning (i.e., Random Forests) to 1) quantify the extent to which relationship quality is predictable and 2) identify which constructs reliably predict relationship quality. Across 43 dyadic longitudinal datasets from 29 laboratories, the top relationship-specific predictors of relationship quality were perceived-partner commitment, appreciation, sexual satisfaction, perceived-partner satisfaction, and conflict. The top individual-difference predictors were life satisfaction, negative affect, depression, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety. Overall, relationship-specific variables predicted up to 45% of variance at baseline, and up to 18% of variance at the end of each study. Individual differences also performed well (21% and 12%, respectively). Actor-reported variables (i.e., own relationship-specific and individual-difference variables) predicted two to four times more variance than partner-reported variables (i.e., the partner's ratings on those variables). Importantly, individual differences and partner reports had no predictive effects beyond actor-reported relationship-specific variables alone. These findings imply that the sum of all individual differences and partner experiences exert their influence on relationship quality via a person's own relationship-specific experiences, and effects due to moderation by individual differences and moderation by partner-reports may be quite small. Finally, relationship-quality change (i.e., increases or decreases in relationship quality over the course of a study) was largely unpredictable from any combination of self-report variables. This collective effort should guide future models of relationships.

Everyday Thoughts in Time: Experience Sampling Studies of Mental Time Travel.

Time is among the most important yet mysterious aspects of experience. We investigated everyday mental time travel, especially into the future. Two community samples, contacted at random points for 3 (Study 1; 6,686 reports) and 14 days (Study 2; 2,361 reports), reported on their most recent thought. Both studies found that thoughts about the present were frequent, thoughts about the future also were common, whereas thoughts about the past were rare. Thoughts about the present were on average highly happy and pleasant but low in meaningfulness. Pragmatic prospection (thoughts preparing for action) was evident in thoughts about planning and goals. Thoughts with no time aspect were lower in sociality and experiential richness. Thoughts about the past were relatively unpleasant and involuntary. Subjective experiences of thinking about past and future often were similar-while both differed from present focus, consistent with views that memory and prospection use similar mental structures.

Nudging the better angels of our nature: A field experiment on morality and well-being.

A field experiment examines how moral behavior, moral thoughts, and self-benefiting behavior affect daily well-being. Using experience sampling technology, we randomly grouped participants over 10 days to either behave morally, have moral thoughts, or do something positive for themselves. Participants received treatment-specific instructions in the morning of 5 days and no instructions on the other 5 control days. At each day's end, participants completed measures that examined, among others, subjective well-being, self-perceived morality and empathy, and social isolation and closeness. Full analyses found limited evidence for treatment- versus control-day differences. However, restricting analyses to occasions on which participants complied with instructions revealed treatment- versus control-day main effects on all measures, while showing that self-perceived morality and empathy toward others particularly increased in the moral deeds and moral thoughts group. These findings suggest that moral behavior, moral thoughts, and self-benefiting behavior are all effective means of boosting well-being, but only moral deeds and, perhaps surprisingly, also moral thoughts strengthen the moral self-concept and empathy. Results from an additional study assessing laypeople's predictions suggest that people do not fully intuit this pattern of results. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).